Political Quotes

“It's my privilege to be addressing you here on the floor of the House of Representatives. It's always interesting for me to sit here and listen to the other Members deliver their impression of what goes on and how they envision the future, and I enjoyed the gentleman from Illinois's presentation, and the gentleman from California, and particularly the gentleman from Arizona, who came here to talk about the balanced budget amendment. And so I take that issue up as we get ready to close out the evening, and I would like to add some of the points that I have to this. That is, when I was first elected to office, it was in the State senate in 1996, and I believed that if I just simply made a cogent argument on principle that it would sway my colleagues over to my side. I didn't think it was all that complicated. It wouldn't be hard to talk about balancing the budget, keeping the spending within our times. Because, after all, each year government always provides more and more of what people were providing for themselves the years before. So this encroachment of government that is the growth in the nanny state and the decrease in personal responsibility had been going along for years back then. It's been accelerated in the last few years. But the question I'd ask at this point is: What should government not do? What is it that is too much for government to do? Where should we draw the line? And as now I am halfway into the ninth year in this United States Congress, Mr.…”